Author Archive
Branded Entertainment: Coming Soon to a Facebook Near You

Branded Entertainment: Coming Soon to a Facebook Near You

Branded Content Invades Social Media

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Call It Tracebook

Call It Tracebook

First there was last week’s kerfuffle over the Wall Street Journal piece headlined, “Facebook in Privacy Breach.” (Sneak ADtack take here.) CyberBible TechCrunch dismissed the report as the inmates running the asylum: So what’s the big deal? The big deal is that most people in tech, let alone the general population, have no idea what...

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Google Goggles

Google Goggles

Consumer Watchdog’s Inside Google website aims to “educate the public and opinion leaders about Google’s dangerous dominance over the Internet, computing and our online lives.” For the past month or so, the site has featured this video, which has gotten (along with the final version) over 367,000 views in the past six weeks:   Ham-handed...

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NYT Embeds Stealth Ad in Blog

NYT Embeds Stealth Ad in Blog

New York Times Public Editor Arthur S. Brisbane spends his current column tsk-tsking the paper for this: READERS of The Choice, a blog by reporter Jacques Steinberg, encountered something unusual — and for some of them, something very disturbing — when they clicked on a link in the second paragraph of his Sept. 29 blog post. It was...

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Conservative Website Passes Off Corporate Shill As Columnist

Conservative Website Passes Off Corporate Shill As Columnist

The Daily Caller, which fancies itself a conservative counterpoint to The Huffington Post but isn’t, just published this piece: FoodPolitik: Controlling Your Food, the Trojan Horse of ‘public health’ With the election barely two weeks away, the nation is focused on what will happen if (when?) control of Congress swings rightward. While some far-reaching elements of...

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Call It Facecrook

Call It Facecrook

Turns out that Facebook is fencing users’ personal information to advertisers and webstalking companies. From the Wall Street Journal’s invaluable What They Know series: Facebook in Privacy Breach Many of the most popular applications, or “apps,” on the social-networking site Facebook Inc. have been transmitting identifying information—in effect, providing access to people’s names and, in...

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NBC Goes Old School with Product Integration

NBC Goes Old School with Product Integration

Headline of a Friday New York Times piece: Sponsors Also Star in School Makeover Reality Show NBCs new reality program “School Pride” (Friday nights at 8, a.k.a. Death Valley), which showcases rehabs of rundown schools, is, according to the Times, “a microcosm of both the good side (authentic, if totally random, charity) and the bad...

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Boston Globe Gives A Kick About Skechers Advertainment

Boston Globe Gives A Kick About Skechers Advertainment

Boston Globe editorial: Give advertainment the boot Text: [A]dvocates of protecting children from excessive advertising have blown the whistle on a new Nicktoons animated children’s program that features [characters] used in TV ads and comic strips to promote Skechers shoes. The Federal Communications Commission should give the series the boot. The Boston-based Campaign for a Commercial Free...

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FTC=Forget That Cheerleading

FTC=Forget That Cheerleading

Chicago Tribune headline (via mediapost.com): FTC cracks down on fake online endorsements Agency attempts to punish fake reviews, force disclosure Nut graf: Last October, the Federal Trade Commission updated its truth-in-advertising guidelines, which were last revised in 1980, to address the commercialism of the Web. The regulations require anyone paid in cash or in-kind to...

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Forget Fox News. This Is Faux News.

Forget Fox News. This Is Faux News.

Sneak ADtack charter member Steve Stein sent this helpful comment yesterday: Ah, I forgot, but at 4 past the hour and half hour WBZ radio reminds me that I *hate* this kind of commercial – “Tomorrow’s Technology Today”: a Toyota ad produced to sound like a news story. For another view, see Boston writer Joanne...

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"Style" Bustin'

“Style” Bustin’

Local infomercial "Style Boston" has expanded its footprint, as they call it in the TV biz, from a half-hour per week to three hours a week, thanks to a new arrangement with regional cable-news outlet NECN and Comcast Sportsnet New England.

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Product Placement Cements Its Place

Product Placement Cements Its Place

"The act of a person who steals your screen is no different than the act of a person who steals your watch."

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